Category: Sustainability
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Sustainable Marketing And Commerciality
My regular collaborator, Jonathan Knowles, has a new piece in the Journal of Sustainable Marketing. He tackles the idea of sustainable marketing and the role of marketers in the world of for-profit companies. What then does he have to say about sustainable marketing and commercialism? For-Profit Organizations And Social Progress Knowles starts by arguing that…
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What If I’m Wrong?
The Population Bomb shared Paul Ehrlich’s predictions about the future. After his doom-laden warnings about mass starvation and the need for population control, by compulsion if necessary, Ehrlich asked, “What if I’m wrong?” What if his Malthusian thinking is a mistake? (See here for Malthus). The author was trying to make the point that it…
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Population As A Disaster
Paul Ehrlich wrote The Population Bomb in 1968. I read a version printed in 1988 which had a 1978 update. It is a gloomy book that makes bold claims of famine and crises. There have certainly been problems in the last 55 years but nothing like Ehrlich predicted. It is an over-the-top book written by…
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History Of Sustainability
Jeremy Caradonna wrote a history of sustainability in his book, Sustainability. (I read the revised edition from 2022). This work draws linkages from early ideas of sustainability and looks at where we are now. Things have moved forward, and back, on the sustainability front. There is some interesting history. As someone who lives in Georgia,…
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Benefit Corporation Versus B Corp
There are two related terms for coporations that are seeking to do good in addition to doing well. Both terms often apply to such corporations but this isn’t always the case. As such, it is useful to distinguish between them. So lets look at Benefit Corporation Versus B Corp. B Corp A B Corp is…
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Eliminating The Concept Of Waste
In their book Cradle to Cradle, sustainability writers William (Bill) McDonough and Michael Braungart argued that we should be thinking not in terms of Cradle to Grave — birth to death — for products. Instead, we should be thinking of reuse. Their second book along those lines, Upcycle, goes further. Their basic argument is that…
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The Path To 2050
How can the world get to carbon neutral by 2050? This is the date the Paris Agreement specified for getting away from the activities that produce greenhouse gasses (see here). Many would argue that that the Paris agreement was not ambitious enough. Still, we don’t currently have a clear plan to reach carbon neutral by…
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Comprehensive Guide To Drawdown Solutions
Drawdown is a New York Times Bestseller and you can see why. The book, by a large team led by Paul Hawken, has a profusion of detail on ways that the impacts of climate change can be alleviated and ultimately reversed. It provides a guide to drawdown solutions. The book gives an optimistic view of…
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Triple Bottom Line
John Elkington gave us the idea of the Triple Bottom Line (TBL) in 1994. In 2018 he proposed that the idea be recalled for a retooling. Things hadn’t worked out as he hoped. The Triple Bottom Line The idea behind the Triple Bottom Line is simple. Rather than fixating on financial performance alone, the bottom…
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Stakeholder Management As A Threat
For my second and final post on Vivek Ramaswamy’s Woke Inc. I want to discuss his view of stakeholder management. Especially, the idea of stakeholder management as a threat (specifically to democracy). Stakeholder Management And Woke As I mentioned in a prior post part of the challenge with definitions is that people aren’t clear what…
